Mike Butcher

Latest from Mike Butcher

Startups start with talent, and the talent, as we all know, seems to get younger every year. But it wouldn’t happen if children themselves were not introduced to the word of technology and engineering early, and shown that it can be a fun, creative environment. For the last 6 years, a pioneer of this in the UK has been Young Rewired State, a non-profit founded by Emma Mulqueeny, which… Read More

We’re continuing to announce speakers for our TechCrunch Disrupt London conference on December 7-8, 2015. The conference will feature an amazing slate of global startups, investors, influential speakers, VIP guests and more.
Niklas Östberg, Delivery Hero
Niklas Östberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Delivery Hero. Niklas has been involved in the start-up scene since… Read More

Iwoca, one of the booming cluster of fintech startups coming out of London, has raised a $20 million series B round from the VC arm of Germany’s CommerzVentures, Acton Capital Partners, the Munich-based private equity and VC firm Redline Capital and other existing investors. The funding will be used to grow the lending platform’s European business. Iwoca offers flexible financing… Read More

Equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs has raised a $15.6 million (£10 million) Series A round led by Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc (WPCT) and Augmentum Capital, the money from which will be used to launch in the U.S. market. Seedrs had previously raised $7.2 million from Faber Ventures and it’s own crowdfunding campaign. Read More

Back in March the Vector — a smartwatch with an e-ink LCD screen — made its debut in a number of reviews in the tech press. Of note was the unusual 30-day battery life and a smartphone control app which worked across iOS, Android and Windows phones. What wasn’t elucidated in detail at the time was that the startup not only planned to release an API to developers, allowing them… Read More

The scale of the opportunity in cloud computing and SaaS was underlined today with the news that Notion Capital has closed its third fund with a first round of $120 million, with a final close of $150 million expected. Funds under management will therefore be over $300 million.
Partners and brothers Ben and Jos White formed Notion in 2008 after selling MessageLabs to Symantec for $700 million… Read More

We’re delighted today to announce the next round of speakers for our TechCrunch Disrupt London conference on December 7-8, 2015. The conference will feature an outstanding slate of global startups, influential speakers, guests and more.
Oliver Samwer, Co-founder – Rocket Internet
Oliver Samwer is one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs ever, having built and exited… Read More

Since live streaming from mobile phones came roaring back in the era of social media, major celebrities have been courted by platforms like Meerkat and Periscope for their crowd pulling power. Now another one of those stars is putting his money where his mouth is.
David Beckham, the well known athlete and megabrand, has become a founding investor in a new British startup which plans to take… Read More

Who says France can’t produce startups? Online marketplace startup Mirakl has just closed a $20m Series B round of funding led by 83North with participation from new fund Felix Capital, and Dave Strohm, Partner at Greylock and a founding investor and advisor to 83North. The cash will be used to take its platform to more B2C and B2B retailers globally. Why? Well, Mirakl claims it… Read More

Only last week fantasy sports startup (although it was started in 2007…) FanDuel raised $275 million in a Series E round, taking the total capital raised to date to $363 million. That put it into the $1 billion valuation bracket, making one of the few startups out of Scotland to achieve the ‘unicorn’ status. Read More

Fidelity Growth Partners Europe arrived on the European scene with a $150 million fund back in 2010 and you could say it’s been busy. Building on Fidelity’s 40-year heritage of venture investing, the firm has since invested in Seatwave, Wahanda, GoodData, and Notonthehighstreet to name just a few. As a private equity and venture capital firm, it’s also played in the early… Read More

In a world where furnishings startup Fab.com ended up in a fire sale after raising over $336 million, proving that it’s “curation” business model simply hadn’t worked, Made.com has been a complete contrast. Based on working directly with designers of anything from sofas to bicycles, Made avoided the US and gradually built a significant European business. Today… Read More

Last year busuu — the social network for language learning — signed a distribution partnership with Pearson English, a newly formed business unit of the world’s largest education company, Pearson PLC. It was rumoured that the startup, which has over 55 million users, then went on a hunt for new institutional funding. But it appears the company prefers to deal with these… Read More

The dream of private jets becoming more accessible to the rest of us (well, ok, SOME of the rest of us) has long been the goal of startups in the space which have tried to gnaw away at the old-fashioned business models. BlackJet has famously tried to become an almost Uber-like, on demand service. And there are others such as Netjets. Now a new-ish entrant thinks it has come up with a very… Read More

In another sign that the Bitcoin and the Blockchain are becoming a platform for the long term, BitFury, the Bitcoin Blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company, has secured $20 million in funding from investors including DRW Venture Capital, iTech Capital and the Georgian Co-Investment Fund.
Among other things, Bitfury offers the HexFury, a USB mining rig with six… Read More

Warby Parker has garnered a lot of interest for a glasses company, not least from the tech press. It allowed customers to order and try on several pairs of glasses that retailed for under $100 before buying, then offered the glasses at a discount by cutting out third parties and sending directly to consumers. As a result of this model, it’s raised $215.5 million to-date and is now worth… Read More

Verifying the authenticity of a fine art work has become almost the raison d’être of the art world itself. Without either, an art work can be entirely worthless. For instance, in this year’s respected Hiscox Online Art Trade Report, “Certificates of Authenticity and Condition Reports” are the top two services people want when buying art and collectibles online. But… Read More

Amid the craziness of Greece right now, at least some startups are still ‘keeping on keeping on’. To that end, localisation software startup Transifex has secured $4 million in Series A funding, led by Toba Capital with participation from seed VC investors NEA, Arafura Ventures and angels including Parse founder and CEO, Ilya Sukhar. The amount raised to date is $6.5… Read More

Berlin, du bist so wunderbar! We’re hosting the Closing Party in honour of our 10th Anniversary at Tech Open Air Berlin! So please grab your tickets and come along. We will release public tickets step by step, starting with the first 500 today.
In true Berlin style, we’ll be wrapping up this year’s festival at Chalet, an iconic Berlin venue set in a magic 150-year-old building… Read More